Effort to abolish Louisiana death penalty advances after Senate committee vote

BATON ROUGE, La. (LSU Manship School News Service) - A new effort to abolish the state’s death penalty advanced Tuesday with a 4-2 Senate committee vote on a bill proposed by Republican State Sen. Dan Claitor.

Louisiana is one of 31 states that permits capital punishment. Similar efforts to ban the death penalty have failed in recent years as they went through the legislative process.

Under this year’s bill, voters would decide whether to change Louisiana’s constitution to make it illegal to execute criminals for any offense committed on or after January 1, 2021. Judiciary Committee C also passed an amendment that would include the bill on the 2020 presidential ballot for voters to decide.

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